2024, for me, was a year where I rediscovered my love for film. According to my Letterboxd account, I watched 54 films in the last twelve months! (I know, I know, I should get a life). Some were incredible, showstopping, the epitome of great cinema… others, not so much. Here are five of my favorite discoveries from the last year:
1. Paris is Burning (1990)
Even aside from this film serving as a vital cultural document, a glimpse into a community at its prime, Paris is Burning is also beauty, fashion, liberation, and rebellion. This experimental-documentary-style film honors the queer ballroom scene of 1980s and 1990s New York City as we follow some of its most prominent members, including Venus Xtravaganza, Pepper LaBeija, and Will Ninja. For these drag queens, who are socially ostracized and shunned in their daily lives, these ballroom competitions are often the only opportunities to live their lives authentically, without the judgement of mainstream society, and celebrate their queerness in all of its grandeur and joy. Though not many of these queens lived to see their hopes and dreams come to fruition, Paris is Burning is a hopeful reminder that no matter the political state of our world, queer people have had, and will always have, a place in it.
“Some of them say that we’re sick, we’re crazy. And some of them think that we are the most gorgeous, special things on Earth.”
2. Casablanca (1942)
I, too, don’t understand how it took me almost two decades to watch the arguably most classic and influential movie of all time. All’s fair in love and war, as the saying goes, but what happens when you are caught in the middle of both? In the midst of World War II, Rick, a nightclub owner in Casablanca, Morocco, is shocked when his lost love, Ilsa, walks through the door with another man. The city is infamous for serving as a crossroads between German-occupied Europe and freedom; everyone who passes through doesn’t intend on staying very long. Rick helps arrange their escape but must decide between his own love for Ilsa and the greater good of the war. I can only imagine how audiences in 1942 felt, when the Allied victory over the Nazis was not yet secure, and yet laughter, singing, and humanity still prevail.
“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.”
3. Hereditary (2018)
How do I discuss a movie that is so incredibly good but I also never want to think about ever again? Hereditary flips everything you think you know about the horror genre on its head, and its effect is nothing short of deeply, genuinely, terrifying. It’s the kind of movie that necessitates a rewatch, with all of the minute details and easter eggs that fly right over your head on a first viewing. Ultimately, the film excels at portraying the grief the Graham family endures after the loss of a maternal figure, with the second half taking a shocking turn into the supernatural. This film has some of the most gruesome, bone-chilling scenes I’ve ever encountered with incredible performances from Alex Wolff and Toni Collette (I will never get over her being robbed of an Oscar nomination). After I watched this for the first time, I ventured to Youtube and watched a four-hour-long analysis that proves just how much complex thought was put into its creation. If you think you know what direction this film is going in at the beginning, all I will say is that you are absolutely, without a doubt, wrong.
“It’s heartening to see so many strange, new faces here today. I know my mom would be very touched, and probably a little suspicious to see this turnout.”
4. A Complete Unknown (2024)
Probably my most anticipated release of the year, A Complete Unknown not only met but defied my expectations. Timothée Chalamet, transformed into the folk icon Bob Dylan (down to the fingernails), takes audiences back in time to a defining moment in the evolution of American folk music. I felt connected with this movie from the beginning, and not just because the first few scenes take place in my hometown (Morris Plains represent!) where he serenades Woody Guthrie at Greystone Psychiatric Hospital. The film takes place over four years, from 1961 when he arrives in New York City far away from his home in Minnesota, to 1965 as he bewilders crowds at the Newport Folk Festival by adding an electric twist to his simple acoustic tunes. It’s not so much about Dylan’s talent, ample that it may be, as much as it is about what it was like to be in his circle at such a pivotal moment in his career.
“I wanna tell you a little story. Few months back, my friend Woody Guthrie and I, we met a young man. He dropped in on us outta nowhere and he played us a song. And in that moment we got a feeling we were getting a glimpse of the future.”
5. Wit (2001)
Vivian Bearing is a professor of metaphysical poetry, specializing in the works of John Donne, when she is diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer; “there is no stage five.” Face to face with death, Bearing reflects on her uncompromising and sometimes harsh approach to teaching, the same way her primary physician Dr. Harvey Kelekian approaches her debilitating chemotherapy where her body will be a vital contribution to his research. A homage to health humanities and bioethics, Wit confronts end-of-life care and patient wellbeing, prioritizing individuals over the endless quest for the attainment of knowledge.
“Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness. I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see I have been found out.”